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January 3
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Thirteen first ladies of the United States have written a total of twenty-two memoirs. The first lady is the hostess of the White House, and the position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, with some historical exceptions. Every memoir by a first lady published in the 20th and 21st centuries has been a bestseller, at times outselling those of their presidential husbands. In the early 1800s, Abigail Adams had her correspondence published as Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams, and Louisa Adams "made several attempts at an autobiography", although she never sought to publish them. Julia Grant was the first to write and attempt to publish her memoirs, writing The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant in the 1890s after the death of her husband, Ulysses S. Grant, but she never found a suitable publisher for them before her death in 1902. Helen Taft was the first to have memoirs (title page pictured) published during her lifetime, in 1914. Memoirs by presidential spouses were uncommon until the 1970s; most first ladies have written and published at least one memoir about their life since Betty Ford's publication of her first memoir in the late 1970s. (Full list...)
January 7
Mersenne primes and perfect numbers are two deeply interlinked types of natural numbers in number theory. Mersenne primes, named after the friar Marin Mersenne, are prime numbers that can be expressed as 2p − 1 for some positive integer p. For example, 3 is a Mersenne prime as it is a prime number and is expressible as 22 − 1. Perfect numbers are natural numbers that equal the sum of their positive proper divisors (all divisors excluding the number itself). There is a one-to-one correspondence between the Mersenne primes and the even perfect numbers. This is due to the Euclid–Euler theorem, partially proved by Euclid and completed by Leonhard Euler: even numbers are perfect if and only if they can be expressed in the form 2p − 1 × (2p − 1), where 2p − 1 is a Mersenne prime. (Full list...)
January 10
The National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor is an honour presented annually at India's National Film Awards ceremony by the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), an organisation set up by the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. A national panel appointed annually by the DFF selects the actor who has given the best performance in a supporting role within Indian cinema. The award is presented by the President of India at a ceremony held in New Delhi. Including ties and repeat winners, the government of India has presented a total of 32 Best Supporting Actor awards to 29 different actors. The first recipient was Victor Banerjee, who was honoured at the 32nd National Film Awards for his performance in the Bengali film Ghare Baire (1984). Three actors—Nana Patekar, Pankaj Kapur, and Atul Kulkarni—have been honoured twice. The most recent recipient of the award is Vijay Sethupathi (pictured), for his performance in the Tamil film Super Deluxe (2019). (Full list...)
January 14
Cervids, or deer, are members of Cervidae, a family of hoofed ruminant mammals in the order Artiodactyla. They are widespread throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and are found in a wide variety of biomes. Cervids range in size from the 60 cm (24 in) long and 32 cm (13 in) tall pudú to the 3.4 m (11.2 ft) long and 3.4 m (11.2 ft) tall moose (example pictured). The fifty-four species of Cervidae are split into eighteen genera within three subfamilies: Capreolinae (New World deer), Cervinae (Old World deer), and Hydropotinae (water deer). Extinct species have also been placed into Capreolinae and Cervinae. More than one hundred extinct Cervidae species have been discovered, though due to ongoing research and discoveries the exact number and categorization is not fixed. (Full list...)
January 17
The 2002 NFL expansion draft is the most recent National Football League (NFL) draft in which a new expansion team, named the Houston Texans, selected its first players. On October 6, 1999, in Atlanta, Georgia, NFL owners had unanimously voted to award the 32nd NFL franchise and Super Bowl XXXVIII to the city of Houston, Texas. In order for the Texans to become competitive with existing teams, the league awarded them the first pick in the 2002 NFL Draft and gave them the opportunity to select current players from existing teams. That selection was provided by the expansion draft, held on February 18, 2002. In this draft, held months before the regular draft, the existing franchises listed players from which the Texans could select to switch to the new team. Teams placed many quality players on the list who had large contracts, as the Texans were required to assume the contracts of those players if selected. The Texans drafted a total of 19 players. (Full list...)
January 21
Breaking Bad, an American drama series, received more than two hundred awards and nominations. Created by Vince Gilligan, the series premiered on January 20, 2008, and broadcast sixty-two episodes before concluding on September 29, 2013. It stars Bryan Cranston (pictured) as Walter White, a chemistry teacher who decides to produce and distribute crystal meth with his former student Jesse Pinkman, a drug dealer portrayed by Aaron Paul. Upon release, the series was praised for its acting, characters, writing, direction, and cinematography. In 2014, it entered Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed show of all time. Throughout its run, the series was nominated for fifty-eight Emmy Awards and won sixteen. For their performances, Cranston won four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Paul won three times for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. The success of Breaking Bad led to the creation of the spin-off Better Call Saul and the 2019 film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. (Full list...)
January 24
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There are forty-one local nature reserves in Berkshire, a county in South East England. Local nature reserves (LNRs) in England are designated by local authorities under Section 21 of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. LNRs are sites which have a special local interest either biologically or geologically. Local authorities have a duty to care for them, and must control the sites by owning or leasing them, or by having an agreement with the owners. The local authorities can apply local byelaws to manage and protect LNRs. Five LNRs in Berkshire are also Sites of Special Scientific Interest, two are Special Areas of Conservation and four are managed by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. (Full list...)
January 28
Six songs reached number one on the Harlem Hit Parade chart in 1942. Launched by Billboard in the same year, it ranked the "most popular records in Harlem". The chart was based on a survey of record stores primarily in the Harlem district of New York City. It is considered to be the start of the lineage of the magazine's R&B chart. Most of 1942's number ones were in the genres of jazz and swing, which were among the most popular styles of music in the early 1940s. The first chart-topper was "Take It and Git" by the tuba player and bandleader Andy Kirk and his band the Twelve Clouds of Joy, which occupied the top spot for a single week. The only song to spend multiple consecutive weeks at number one in 1942 was "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby with the Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and his orchestra, which reached the top spot in the December 19 issue of Billboard and remained there the following week. "Trav'lin' Light" by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra featuring Lady Day, a pseudonym for singer Billie Holiday (pictured), had the highest total number of weeks atop the chart in 1942, spending three non-consecutive weeks in the top spot. (Full list...)
January 31
Utah has participated in 32 United States presidential elections since the state's admission to the Union in January 1896. In the 1896 presidential election, Utah was won by the Democratic Party candidate William Jennings Bryan (pictured), who received almost 83 percent of the popular vote. In the subsequent four years, however, the Republican Party dominated Utah politics, which continued until the 1932 election. In the four-way race in the 1912 election, Utah was one of only two states won by incumbent president William Howard Taft. In the 1932 election, the Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt won Utah amid a national political landslide victory. Democrats maintained their popularity in Utah politics until the 1952 election, after which the Republican Party regained influence. In the 1992 election, Utah was one of the two states in which the independent candidate Ross Perot finished in second place, ahead of the Democrat Bill Clinton. As of 2020, the Republican Party has won Utah in 17 of the last 18 elections. (Full list...)